Laggies captures entertainingly the uncertainty of being 20 something.
Laggies
Grade: B
Director: Lynn Shelton (Your Sister’s Sister)
Screenplay: Andrea Seigel
Cast: Keira Knightley (Begin Again), Sam Rockwell (Seven Psycopaths)
Rating: R
Runtime: 99min
by John DeSando
“I like getting older. When you’re in your twenties you’re really forging for your future. Things take shape later on.” Crispin Glover
A twenty-something looking for love today is a wanderer pretty much without a compass, and so it goes in Laggies, an engaging and sometimes humorous film from Lynn Shelton. Megan (Keira Knightly) has obtained a graduate degree but looks like she is still graduating into maturity, and not quite a sophomore in that school. She's getting engaged but uncertain about the commitment to sweet Anthony (Mark Webber), partly because she doesn’t want to be coerced by others’ expectations and gradually she's attracted to the father, Craig (Sam Rockwell), of her young friend, Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz).
Yes, it's confusing although most of us know life is messy at best anyway. Megan's existential crisis is precipitated by her meeting high school senior Annika and her friends, who throw Megan back into that uncertain but semi-carefree time, giving Megan the present time to assess her future plans. Her defining characteristic is to live her life on her own terms, even though that plan is murky and her backbone not yet fully formed to pull it off.
Although future plans are what her friends’ demand of her, Megan resists the easy formulas for marriage and its aftermath. In a real sense, she questions why she should be fixed in the formula of adulthood. Therein lies the gem-like center of Laggies, where her soul cries for individuality and society dictates an adherence to rituals of conformity.
While at times Knightly' s hesitating, halting speech patterns cause me discomfort, I can live with the affectations (more appropriate for a teen than a twenty something) as writer Andrea Siegel probes for the nexus of teen turbulence, a time of identity crisis that in Megan's case extends too far into her twenties. Laggies is an entertaining film for exploring the challenges a twenty something faces if she hasn’t figured out her goals yet.
Well, someone does mention carpe diem, so I guess it's fair to say the film finds that peace and identity in the present, where whether one marries or not does extend into the rest of one's life. By the way, I'm not happy that a woman's happiness is once again determined by the romantic love, but, hey, that's showbiz.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
